This platform
was adopted by the delegates of the membership of the Greens/Green
Party USA (G/GPUSA) at their annual Green Congress, meeting in Chicago,
May 26-28, 2000. It reflects the majority views of the G/GPUSA membership.

G/GPUSA's national
officers, spokespeople, and National Committee are expected to act
in a manner consistent with the policy framework set by this platform.
In keeping with G/GPUSA's structure of "democratic decentralism" where
accountability is bottom-up, not top-down, the platform is not binding
on the state and local affiliates of the Greens/Green Party USA.

This platform,
therefore, does not necessarily reflect in every respect the views
of Green Party candidates at any level, including Ralph Nader and
Winona LaDuke, Green Party candidates for President and Vice-President
in 2000.

The Greens/Green
Party USA is the original Green Party organization in the USA. It
carries forward the radical vision of the early Greens based on grassroots
political and economic democracy, nonviolence, social justice, and
ecological sustainability.

Formed as the
Committees of Correspondence in 1984, the annual Green Congress changed
the name to Green Committees of Correspondence in 1989 and to The
Greens/Green Party USA in 1991. G/GPUSA is a membership organization
of individual members who participate in affiliated local and state
organizations and support the organization with dues scaled to their
ability to pay.

Green politics
is an ecological approach to politics that links social and ecological
problems. Ecology studies the relationships among organisms and their
environment. Political ecology brings human institutions and ideologies
into this holistic perspective.

We find that the same
institutions and ideas that cause the exploitation and oppression of humans
also cause the degradation and destruction of the environment. Both are
rooted in a hierarchical, exploitative, and alienated social system that
systematically produces human oppression and ecological destruction.

For the Greens, therefore,
the fights against racism, sexism, class exploitation, bureaucratic domination,
war, and all other forms of social domination and violence are central to
the movement for an ecologically sustainable society. In order to harmonize
society with nature, we must harmonize human with human.

The Greens carry forward
the traditional values of the Left: freedom, equality, and solidarity. We
want to create a truly democratic society without class exploitation or
social domination. But Greens expand this notion of a classless, nonhierarchical
society that is harmonized with itself to include an ecological society
that is harmonized with nature as well.

To the social movements,
the Greens say that in order for humanity to progress toward a democratic
society, we must resolve the ecological crisis so that people are still
around to enjoy democracy. To the environmental movements, the Greens say
that in order to have an ecological society, we must have a democratic society
so that people have the power to choose ecological sustainability. To survive,
we must have ecological sustainability. To choose ecological sustainability,
we must have the power of democracy.

The following platform
planks are the immediate policy goals we support to move us toward an ecological
democracy.

An Economic
Bill of Rights

Universal
Social Security: Taxable Basic Income Grants for all, structured
into the progressive income tax, that guarantee an adequate income
sufficient to maintain a modest standard of living. Start at $500/week
($26,000/year) for a family of four, with $62.50/week ($3,250/year)
adjustments for more or fewer household members in 2000 and index
to the cost of living.

Jobs for All:
A guaranteed right to job. Full employment through community-based
public works and community service jobs programs, federally financed
and community controlled.

Living Wages:
A family-supporting minimum wage. Start at $12.50 per hour in
2000 and index to the cost of living.

30-Hour Work
Week: A 6-hour day with no cut in pay for the bottom 80% of the
pay scale.

Social Dividends:
A "second paycheck" for workers enabling them to receive 40 hours
pay for 30 hours work. Paid by the government out of progressive taxes
so that social productivity gains are shared equitably.

Universal
Health Care: A single-payer National Health Program to provide
free medical and dental care for all, with freedom of choice for consumers
among both conventional and alternative health care providers, federally
financed and controlled by democratically elected local boards.

Free Child
Care: Available voluntarily and free for all who need it, modeled
after Head Start, federally financed, and community controlled.

Lifelong Public
Education: Free, quality public education from pre-school through
graduate school at public institutions.

Affordable
Housing: Expand rental and home ownership assistance, fair housing
enforcement, public housing, and capital grants to non-profit developers
of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at
no more than 25% of their income. Democratic community control of
publicly funded housing programs.

Community Assemblies:
Ground political representation in a foundation of participatory, direct
democracy: a Community Assembly in every neighborhood, open to all of its
residents, acting as a grassroots legislative body, with its own budget
for local administration, and the power (in concert with other Citizens
Assemblies who share a representative) to monitor, instruct, and recall
representatives elected to municipal, state, and federal office.

A Proportional,
Single-Chamber US Congress: Abolish the disproportional, aristocratic
US Senate. Create a single-chamber US Congress, elected by a system of mixed-member
proportional representation that combines district representatives elected
by preference voting and party representatives seated in proportion to each
party's vote.

Environmental Home
Rule: Establish the right of every state, county, and municipality to
restrict or prohibit the production, sale, distribution, storage, or transportation
of any substance it designates as dangerous or toxic.

Average Workers'
Pay for Elected Officials: Pay elected officials average workers' salaries
so that they understand the needs of average people and stop being an elite
of professional politicians with separate class interests.

DC Statehood: Full
self-government and congressional representation for the people of Washington
DC.

Proportional Representation:
Elect legislative bodies by proportional representation where each party
has representation in proportion to its total vote.

Preference Voting:
Elect single offices by majority preference voting where voters rank
candidates in order of preference and votes are distributed according to
preferences in instant runoffs until a winner receives a majority of votes.

Public Campaign
and Party Financing:Equal
public campaign financing and free broadcast media time for all candidates
who agree not to use private money. Equal free broadcast media time for
party broadcasts. Public financing of parties through matching funds for
party dues and small donations up to $300 a year.

Fair Ballot Access:
Federal legislation to require each state to enable a new party or any
independent candidate to qualify for the ballot through a petition of no
greater than 1/10th of 1% of the total vote cast in the district in the
last gubernatorial election, with a 10,000 signature maximum.

Eliminate Mandatory
Primaries: Allow parties the right to nominate by membership convention
instead of state-run primaries.

Ecological Production:
Set goals and timetables to phase out and ban the production and release
of synthetic chemicals and to convert all production to materials that are
bio-degradable, bio-inert, or confined to closed-loop industrial cycles.
Use federal investments, purchasing, mandates, and incentives to:

Phase out most
chlorinated and other synthetic petrochemicals and phase in natural,
biodegradable substitutes.

Phase out synthetic
fertilizers and pesticides and phase in organic agriculture.

Shut down waste
incinerators, phase out landfills, and phase in full recycling.

Require manufacturers
to be responsible for the whole life cycle of their products by taking
back used packaging and products for re-manufacturing, reuse, or recycling.

Legalize industrial
hemp as an ecological source for wood pulp, paper, cloth, lubricants,
fibers, and many other products.

Eliminate Corporate
Personhood: Legislation or constitutional amendment to end the legal
fiction of corporate personhood.

End Corporate Limited
Liability: Make corporate shareholders bear the same liabilities as
other property owners.

Federal Chartering
of Interstate Corporations

Periodic Review
of Corporate Charters: A public corporate charter review process for
each corporation above $20 million in assets every 20 years to see if it
is serving the public interest according to social and ecological as well
as financial criteria.

Strengthen Anti-Trust
Enforcement: Require breakup of any firm with more than 10% market share
unless it makes a compelling case every five years in a public regulatory
proceeding that it serves the public interest to keep the firm intact.

Democratic Production:
Establish the right of citizens to vote on the expansion or phasing
out of products and industries, especially in areas of dangerous or toxic
production.

Workplace Democracy:
Establish the right of workers at every enterprise over 10 employees
to elect supervisors and managers and to determine how to organize work.

Worker Control of
Worker Assets-Pension Funds and ESOP Shares: Pension funds representing
over $5 trillion in deferred wages account for nearly one-third of financial
assets in the US. 11 million workers participate in employee stock-option
plans (ESOPs). Reform ERISA, labor laws, and ESOP tax provisions to enable
workers to democratically control their assets.

Democratic Conversion
of Big Business: Mandatory break-up and conversion to democratic worker,
consumer, and/or public ownership on a human scale of the largest 500 US
industrial and commercial corporations that account for about 10% of employees,
50% of profits, 70% of sales, and 90% of manufacturing assets.

Democratic Conversion
of Small and Medium Business: Financial and technical incentives and
assistance for voluntary conversion of the 22.5 million small and medium
non-farm businesses in the US to worker or consumer cooperatives or democratic
public enterprises. Mandate that workers and the community have the first
option to buy on preferential terms in cases of plant closures, the sale
or merger of significant assets, or the revocation of corporate charters.

Democratic Banking:
Mandatory conversion of the 200 largest banks with 80% of all bank assets
into democratic publicly-owned community banks. Financial and technical
incentives and assistance for voluntary conversion of other privately-owned
banks into publicly-owned community banks or consumer-owned credit unions.

Democratize Monetary
Policy and the Federal Reserve System: Place a 100% reserve requirement
on demand deposits in order to return control of monetary policy from private
bankers to elected government. Selection of Federal Reserve officers by
our elected representatives, not private bankers. Strengthen the regional
development mission of the regional Federal Reserve Banks by directing them
to target investments to promote key policy objectives, such as high-wage
employment, worker and community ownership, ecological production, and inner
city reconstruction.

Ecological Taxes:
Tax pollution, resource extraction, harmful products, and the use of
our common wealth of natural capital (land sites according to land value,
timber and grazing lands, ocean and freshwater resources, oil and minerals,
electromagnetic spectrum, satellite orbital zones).

Simple, Progressive
Income Taxes: Enact a no-loopholes, graduated personal income tax with
equal taxation of all income, regardless of source. Provide an income tax
credit for each dependent to replace and fully compensate for the current
exemptions and deductions that benefit to the average taxpayer, such as
the home mortgage deduction and medical deductions.

Guaranteed Adequate
Income: Build taxable Basic Income Grants into the progressive income
tax structure to create a Universal Social Security system that ensures
everyone has income for at least a modest standard of living above the poverty
line.

Maximum Income:
Build into the progressive income tax a 100% tax on all income over
ten times the minimum wage.

End Corporate Welfare:
Target subsidies for worker- and community-owned enterprises, not absentee-owned
corporations. Put subsidies in the public budgets where they can be scrutinized,
not hidden as tax breaks in complicated tax codes. Progressively Graduated
Corporate Revenue and Asset Taxes

Wealth Tax: Enact
a steeply progressive tax on net wealth over $2.5 million (the top 5% of
households).

Stock and Bond Transfer
Tax: Encourage a shift from speculative to productive investments through
a federal stock and bond transfer tax on all securities transactions.

Currency Speculation
Tax: An internationally uniform tax on currency conversion to discourage
speculation. Revenues from the currency speculation tax should be channeled
through international agencies into ecologically sustainable, democratically
controlled development in poor countries.

Advertising Tax:
A tax on advertising to fund a decentralized, pluralistic media system
of real public broadcasting, public service broadcasting on commercial media,
and independent nonprofit, noncommercial media.

Federal Revenue
Sharing: Reduce state and local government dependence on regressive
sales and property taxes through federal revenue sharing that combines centralized
collection of progressive and ecological taxes with decentralized decisions
on spending.

Ecological and Feminist
Economic Accounting: Expand the Bureau of Labor Statistics into a Bureau
of Household, Labor, and Environmental Statistics with revised national
economic accounts, statistics, and indicators that include stocks and flows
of natural wealth, household production, and labor time values. Existing
national income accounts and indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP)
ignore the ecological foundations of the economy and the value of household
production. Ecological accounting will identify the true costs of resource
depletion and pollution and hence appropriate eco-taxes to internalize full
costs. Social accounting will identify the true value of household production
and its contribution to the economy and social well-being. Labor time accounting
will record and publish the current and dated labor time for goods and services,
establishing the average labor time required for each product. These labor
time values will serve as shadow prices against which to judge the fairness
of actual market prices.

End Institutionalized
Racism, Sexism, and Oppression of People with Disabilities: Strengthen
civil rights, anti-discrimination, and affirmative action laws, programs,
and enforcement.

African American
Reparations: A national commission on reparations for African Americans.

Indian Treaty Rights:
Honor all treaty obligations with Native Americans and Chicanos.

Immigrant Rights:
Support the rights of immigrants to housing, education, health care,
jobs, and civil, legal, and political rights.

Reproductive Freedom:
People should be free from government interference in making their reproductive
choices, including abortion, which should be covered by all publicly funded
medical insurance programs.

Comparable Worth:
Legislation to enable women and minorities to receive equal pay for
work of equal value.

End Discrimination
Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered People: Outlaw discrimination
on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, employment, benefits, and
child custody.

Prosecute Police
Brutality-The Jonny Gammage Law: Require independent federal investigation
and prosecution of law enforcement officers charged with violating the civil
rights or causing the bodily injury or death of a human being.

End Political and
Racial Persecution by the Criminal Justice System: Freedom for all political
prisoners and prisoners of racial injustice. Clemency for Leonard Peltier.
New trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Restorative Justice:
Establish a humane criminal sanction system based on prevention, restitution,
rehabilitation, and reconciliation rather than vengeance, forced labor,
and profits for the Prison-Industrial Complex. Restore full funding for
college degree granting programs in state and federal prisons. Jobs and
justice, not more police and prisons.

Legal Aid: Expand
funding of legal aid and public defender programs so all people can have
competent legal representation.

Fight Corporate
Crime: Strengthen laws and enforcement against corporate crime with
penalties that include incarceration of executives and revocation of corporate
charters.

Oppose Tort Reform
that Limits Class Action Lawsuits and Caps Victims' Compensation: The
threat of high victim compensation awards by civil juries must be maintained
as an important deterrent to corporate crime.

Civil Liberties:
Support the Bill of Rights. No compromise on civil liberties and due
process for "national security," "anti-terrorism," or "the war on drugs."
Repeal the 1994 Crime and 1996 Anti-Terrorism bills. End domestic political
spying by police, military, and intelligence agencies.

End the "War on
Drugs:" Decriminalize possession of drugs. Regulate and tax drug distribution.
Release nonviolent drug war prisoners. Treat drug abuse as a health problem,
not a criminal problem. Drug abuse treatment on demand.

Repeal Repressive
Labor Laws: Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act, the Landrum-Griffin Act, the
Hatch Act, and state "Right-To-Work" laws which have crippled labor's ability
to organize by outlawing or severely restricting labor's basic organizing
tools: strikes, boycotts, pickets, and political action.

A Workers' Bill
of Rights: Enact a set of legally enforceable civil rights, independent
of collective bargaining, which (1) extends the Bill of Rights protections
of free speech, association, and assembly into all workplaces, (2) establishes
workers' rights to living wages, portable pensions, information about chemicals
used, report labor and environmental violations, refuse unsafe work, and
participate in enterprise governance, and (3) establishes workers' rights
to freedom from discharge at will, employer search and seizure in the workplace,
sexual harassment, and unequal pay for work of comparable worth.

Expand Worker' Rights
to Organize and Enjoy Free Time:

Majority Card-Check
Recognition of Unions

Strong and
Speedy Penalties for Employers Who Break Labor Laws

Ban Striker
Replacements

Triple Back
Pay for Illegally Locked-Out Workers

Unemployment
Compensation for Striking and Locked-Out Workers

Binding Contract
Arbitration at Union Request

Full Rights
for Farmworkers, Public Employees, and "Workfare" Workers under the
Fair Labor Standards Act

Ban Prison
Slave Labor: End the use of US prisoners to produce goods and services
for sale to the public.

Double-Time
Pay for All Overtime

Prohibit Mandatory
Overtime

6 Weeks Paid
Vacation Annually in addition to Federal Holidays

1 Year Paid
Educational Leave for Every 7 Years Worked

1 Year Parental
Leave for Each Child Born with No Loss of Seniority

Right to Work
Short Hours: No discrimination in pay and promotion against workers
who choose to work short hours.

Equalize School
Funding with Federal Revenue Sharing: Federal financing of all public
education (instead of by regressive local property taxes) so that every
school has the resources it needs to provide the highest quality education
for every child. Use a simple formula based on student population with adjustments
based on need to help bring up school quality and student performance in
poor communities.

Decentralized Administration:
Cut through stifling centralized administration with site-based planning,
policy-making, and management with participation by parents and teachers
with release-time. Maintain central support staff for decentrally administered
schools.

Class Size Reduction:
Federal legislation and financing to reduce student-teacher ratios in
classrooms to 15 to 1 in all public schools.

Preschool Programs:
Federal legislation and financing for public schools to make available
Head Start-type programs for pre-Kindergarten children starting at age 3.

After School Programs:
Federal legislation and financing to make available after-school recreational
and educational programs for all school age children.

Children's Health:
Clinics in all schools to check eyes, teeth, and general health at all
grade levels. Healthy food at breakfast, lunch, and after school programs.
Birth control information at middle and high schools.

Improve Teacher
Training and Pay: Improve the quality of teachers with support for career-long
training. On-the-jobs apprenticeships for teachers-in-training. Teacher
pay scales comparable to other professionals with similar education and
responsibilities.

Curriculum for a
Multicultural Participatory Democracy: We support a democratic public
school curriculum that fosters curiosity, critical thinking, and free expression,
that explicitly promotes democratic and egalitarian anti-racist, anti-sexist,
and multicultural values, that replaces Eurocentric with multicultural textbooks
and other curriculum materials, that does not sort children into academic
and non-academic tracks, and that is academically rigorous with high expectations
for all children.

Support Bilingual
Education: Minority-language children with limited English proficiency
must have instructional programs that build on their native language and
culture while building English proficiency.

Free,
Diverse and Uncensored Media

Infodiversity: An
uninformed people is not free. Create a vital, democratic, diverse media
system, delinked from corporate profit objectives and able to present a
wide range of issues and ideas in their full complexity, free from censorship
by government or by private corporate power.

Support Nonprofit
and Noncommercial Media: A decentralized, democratic system of public
funding of diverse nonprofit, noncommercial media, including broadcast,
print, film, website, and other cultural production. Funding to exceed existing
support for for-profit media, including lower mailing rates and tax deductions
for donors. Guarantee free, universal Internet access.

Real Public Broadcasting:
Complete public funding for real public radio and television broadcasting,
with no advertising or grants from private corporations or foundations.
Support a decentralized, pluralistic system of multiple national networks
and local stations, all independently controlled by boards elected by their
publics and their workers.

Regulate Public
Airwaves in the Public Interest: Reassert the public's right as owners
of the electromagnetic spectrum used as broadcast airwaves to regulate their
use in the public interest. Re-appropriate 6 prime-time hours a day of commercial
broadcast time on each station for real public service broadcasting: ad-free
children's and news/public affairs programming. Fund this liberated time
by charging commercial broadcasters rents for the bandwidths they use, a
tax on sales of commercial stations, and a tax on advertising. Program this
ad-free time under the control of artists' and educators for the children's
programs and journalists for the news and public affairs programs. Restore
the Fairness Doctrine. Free time for all candidates for public office. Prohibit
paid political ads or require free ads of equal time for opponents. Redistribute
substantial bandwidth concessions to public, nonprofit, and locally owned
commercial stations, including low-power stations. Increase stakeholder
representation on and public accountability of the Federal Communications
Commission.

Antitrust Actions
to Break Up Media Conglomerates: Reform antitrust legislation to require
the break up of corporate giants because their concentrated power threatens
democracy, not just competitive pricing, especially with regard to media
concentration where a few media conglomerates control the public's access
to information. Require separate, independent firms for all TV stations,
TV networks, TV show producers, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, book
publishers, film producers, music recorders, Internet service providers,
cable TV systems, cable TV stations, amusement parks, retail stores, and
so forth. Repeal the pro-conglomeration Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Subsidize the existence of multiple newspapers and magazines to express
a diversity of opinion in all communities.

International
Solidarity

A Global Green
Deal: Build world peace and security through a Global Green Deal. First,
the US should finance universal access to primary education, adequate food,
clean water and sanitation, preventive health care, and family planning
services for every human being on Earth. According to the 1999 UN Development
Report, it would take only an additional $40 billion to Fund Global
Basic Human Needs, an amount that is only 13% of the 2000 US military
budget. Second, the US, which now spends half of the world's military expenditures
by itself, should demilitarize its economy and reinvest the Peace Dividend
in financing and technical assistance for an Ecological
Conversion of Human Civilization to Sustainable Systems of Production.

Peace Conversion:
Cut US military spending unilaterally by 75% in two years to establish
a non-interventionist, non-offensive, strictly defensive military posture
and save nearly $250 billion a year.

Peace Dividend:
Dedicate the $250 billion a year Peace Dividend to the Global Green
Deal, Ecological Conversion, the Economic Bill of Rights, and providing
full income and benefits for all workers and soldiers displaced by demilitarization
until they find new jobs at comparable income and benefits.

Unilateral Nuclear,
Biological, and Chemical Disarmament: These weapons of mass destruction
have no place in a non-offensive military. The US should set the example
and demand that other nations match our lead before the proliferation of
weapons to countries around the world leads to mass destruction.

Cooperative Security:
Pursue a "cooperative security" strategy that seeks mutual arms reductions,
progressive elimination of cross-border offensive capabilities, and further
cuts in military spending. The goal is to progressively demilitarize down
to a non-offensive defense of U.S. national territory using a coast guard,
border guard, national guard, and light air defense system, which would
cost about $3 billion, or less than 1% of current US military spending.

Democratize the
United Nations: Cooperative security cannot work as long as the United
Nations remains a US puppet. Support reforms to democratize the United Nations,
such as more proportionality and power in the General Assembly, an elected
Security Council, and the elimination of the Great Power Veto on the Security
Council.

A Pro-Democracy
Foreign Policy: We call for a fundamental shift in US foreign policy,
from supporting repressive regimes in the interests global corporations
to supporting the pro-democracy labor, social, and environmental movements
of the people.

Support International,
Multilateral Peacekeeping to Stop Aggression and Genocide

No Unilateral
US Intervention in the Internal Affairs of Other Countries

Close All Overseas
US Military Bases

Disband NATO and
All Aggressive Military Alliances

Ban US Arms Exports

Abolish the CIA,
NSA, US Army School of the Americas, and All US Agencies of Covert Warfare

End the Economic
Blockades of Cuba, Iraq, and Yugoslavia

Cut Off US
Military Aid to Counter-Insurgency Wars in Colombia and Mexico

Freedom for Lori
Berenson and All Political Prisoners

Require a National
Referendum to Declare War

End Global Financial
Exploitation:
Cancel the debt owed by poor countries to global banks. End the exploitation
of poor countries by IMF "structural adjustment" policies. Abolish the IMF
and World Bank and replace them with a democratic international financial
institution for balancing international accounts and financing short-term
current account balances.

Fair Trade: Withdraw
from the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, and all other corporate-managed
trade agreements that are driving down labor and environmental conditions
globally. Establish an internationalist social tariff system that equalizes
trade by accounting for the differences among countries in wages, social
benefits, environmental conditions, and political rights. Tariff revenues
to a democratic, international fund for ecological production and democratic
development in poor countries in order to level up social and environmental
conditions to a high common standard.